Book Review - Lauren Willig's What Happens at Nightfall
What Happens at Nightfall by Lauren Willig
Published by: William Morrow
Publication Date: October 6th, 2026
Format: Hardcover, 384 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy
At thirty-seven Jess Waters has found herself spending her night following her best friend around a cemetery in Brooklyn on the Domiciles of the Damned tour because she has nothing better to do. Her career has imploded and the only thing waiting for her at home is her Netflix queue and a dead plant. If you look at the plant in the right light it might be considered sculptural. Possibly. Her best friend Kimmy writes popular nonfiction, her paperbacks are staples of airport bookstores. The one she is currently researching is about Susan Smith McKinney Steward, the first African-American female doctor in New York, who happens to be buried in Green-Wood Cemetery. Hence them following a tour guide dressed in a bustle carrying a parasol and wearing more purple than anyone should. Adam Chervinsky is the live-in arborist at Green-Wood Cemetery. He's been a widower for four years trying to get by by feeding as many different chicken recipes as possible to his two children. Melinda is fifteen and wicked smart and seems to have herself put together even if she's developing a deep aversion to chicken. Ben is a different story. He was closer to his mother and at eleven he is starting over at a new school. It's because of Ben that Jess and Adam are destined to meet. In order to impress some boys at his new school Ben has borrowed the key to his mother's family crypt. The Vanderwilt mausoleum is impressive and imposing, with a bust of the Gilded Age matriarch, Cornelia, perched on the roof like a bird of prey. Something scares the boys off and Ben bumps into Jess and Jess, separated from her tour, helps Ben home through a hellacious storm. The least Adam can do is walk Jess to the subway, but she's missing her OMNY card, which must have been lost when Ben bumped into her. They decide to take the long way around, look for Jess's card and lock up the vault. Eerily, the card is at the vault and the vault isn't just open, a stained glass orb that was part of an interior window has been shattered and there's a Ouija board and battery powered candles. The tomb is worthy of M.R. James and Jess is happy to get out of there as soon as possible but there's a problem. There's a parasol. A parasol which was definitely part of her tour guide's ensemble. Adam has been more than generous so she offers to take the parasol back to it's owner and she sighs as she assumes that that will be the last time she sees Adam. Fate and history have other plans in store. The Domiciles of the Damned tour is operated out of a building just blocks from Jess's apartment in Suite 66 on the sixth floor. Only, it's not an office, it's an apartment. The apartment of the tour guide if the clothes in the closet are anything to go by. The murder board is another matter. She's not sure if the guide wants to raise the dead or summon a demon but whichever it is is going to happen this coming weekend at the solstice. And Adam needs to be told. Because it's not just pictures of demons littering the wall, but also pictures of his daughter Melinda. Adam is spooked. He thinks that maybe Jess is stalking his daughter and arranged everything. It's been hard for him to open up after he lost everything in an instant. What is this woman hiding? She has to be dishonest and crazy doesn't she? Because otherwise everything he's even known is wrong and demons might exist. But what's scariest of all is that maybe he can move on with this woman of immense power who he's just met and has spent her life trying to make herself smaller.
What's interesting about Lauren is that she doesn't write what she most likes to read. From years of reading her recommendations it's clear that she loves all things supernatural. Because of her I've found other favorite authors, Ben Aaronovitch, Heather Fawcett, and Daniel O'Malley just to name a few, and yet, her name isn't among this list of supernaturally inclined authors. She's been the queen of historical fiction for so long that even the modern framing devices have gone the way of the dodo. And yet it was because of her modern day characters that first appeared in The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, Eloise Kelly and Colin Selwick, that I first became a fan of hers. If you're a fan of the Pink Carnation series you know that they are somewhat controversial characters, in that at one point they were almost shown the door. But they survived and made it all the way to their HEA in the twelfth and final volume of the series. As I mentioned above, since then Lauren's work has been phasing out using a modern day framing device. In fact, if it wasn't for her Team W books, she hasn't had any modern device or characters for over a decade now. And the thing about Lauren is, she's really good at working in modern references and jokes, which is why I so connected to Eloise and Colin in the first place. It felt a shame that it looked like, at least from my point of view, that she was burning out on history. Her books were still as brilliant as ever, but they felt more and more entrenched in the history and not having any room to breath. Though, if you've ever seen her exuberantly promote a book you know, she barely stops for breath. Therefore when she announced What Happens at Nightfall I was overjoyed. This was a chance for her to get back into romancelandia and write the type of book she herself would read. But, because of her historical bent, the history of Green-Wood Cemetery gives the supernatural aspects a grounding that I don't think a lot of other authors of the supernatural achieve, the aforementioned authors excluded. Green-Wood was its own character. It came alive with Lauren's treatment. She used actual monuments and events to tie into the backstory of how exactly the Vanderwilts ended up with a demon in the family. History going hand in hand with the hellish. Though, for me, I don't know why I'm all in for the demonic but the angelic just felt too religious. Must be me revolting from my Catholic education. As for our hero and heroine? They are perfect, in the most imperfect way. What's more, you can feel Lauren is having fun. She's riffing on all the things she loves, I particularly loved the love for Warehouse 13 and Young Sherlock Holmes. I want more Lauren books like this. Just a thrill ride of fun and emotion and love and the demonic, a little like Evil was. Because what better message can a book have than to be loved and accepted for who you are? All of you, the demonic and the angelic.
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